This invention relates to providing a system for improving and streamlining the evaluation and purchase of products from salespeople by buyers.
A major activity of retail establishments is the wholesale purchase of the products they place on the shelves. The number and types of products can mount into the tens of thousands, particularly in the case of a large store, such as a supermarket or large department store. Large retail establishments employ a staff of buyers whose job is to evaluate products, typically presented by salespeople, to choose and order new products and replacement products. This is an extremely time-intensive and costly procedure, as large numbers of salespeople are constantly vying for the attention of the buyer in order to have their products purchased and placed on the shelves of the retail establishment. The buyers have many different duties, tasks and procedures during the course of a workday.
Phone operations are currently performed on regular phones or on cell phones. The called and calling parties of the buyers (acting for retailers) require separate programming and entries in their respective address books. There exists a need to immediately track such things as the length of a call, and the ability to directly bill the salesperson for the time spent interacting with them. Moreover, simple instructions for the use of systems for tracking time and party names do not exist. Furthermore, the use of multiple programs to perform the above standard operations requires a number of different operations to produce the same end function. This is all tedious, inefficient, and time-consuming. Furthermore, when responding to FAX, E-Mail, letters and memos, and the return of such, the use of multiple programs and procedures requires a number of different operations by a buyer to produce the same end function. Again, this is tedious, inefficient, and time-consuming.
In regard to maintaining the confidentiality of information and communications, current security systems generally require separate computer applications to be opened and separately configured for security scans, encryption, and scrambling. The selection process and the configuring are time-consuming and tedious.
In addition to the above, additional problems exist during the course of the buyers' viewing presentations given by the salespeople (acting for the retail product providers) presenting products. For example, the current method of doing business is to present to buyers physically in their place of business, i.e., at the buyer's department office for the retail establishment. The physical calling on the buyer at the buyer's place of business is inefficient, time-consuming, has security issues involved with it, and is, from a time management standpoint, uncontrollable. Additionally, when dealing with the presentation's quality and completeness, due to the varying knowledge, ability, attention to detail, and selling professionalism of the individual salesman, the presentations are widely disparate. Thus, the current presentation procedure is clumsy, inconsistent, incomplete in many cases, and also requires ground-up preparation for each presentation by the salesman. Additionally, buyer requests for corrected forms, clarifications, and representations are very time-consuming for all parties involved. Further yet, from the salesperson's standpoint, there are significant fixed costs involved with every presentation. Depending on the size and complexity of the presentation, the costs associated with it can be in the thousands of dollars. And even after such a high cost, there is no guarantee that the presentation will be complete when it is presented to a buyer.
Additional problems exist following presentations. The communications after each salesperson's presentation are difficult, as most large retail establishments do not have integrated communications-forwarding systems or procedures to notify key players of the decision to buy, or not to buy. Also, once a buy decision is made, the current retail establishment systems do not have automatic billing capabilities. Billing has to be done on an individual job or purchase-order basis set-up by each buyer individually. This billing or order must then be input into the internal system of the retail establishment, which may only log it to the accounting department. The buyer, in many cases, has to personally do the direct billing, or an assistant has to complete the process. This is time-consuming and ponderous. Further yet, currently no program exists that ties the costs associated with reviewing a presentation made to a buyer with an actual charge-back or billing to the presenting salesperson.
In addition to the above, retail establishments currently have a myriad of reports, top level and otherwise, to track their business. However, in most cases, the key reports that allow one to look at the retail establishment business quickly and concisely do not exist, and most are not available on a computer system or on-line. In some cases, it takes combining two and three reports to see the whole picture. This lack of concise and easily-assembled reports is extremely frustrating and time-inefficient for the buyers and their management.
Yet a further problem is that the buyers for retail establishments currently do not have means at their disposal for the management of their own time and the presenters' time. Contributors to this problem include such things as the lack of standardization within the retail establishment and the associated product sales companies with regard to presentation of products; i.e., each salesperson and the company that salesperson represents produce different product presentations oftentimes varying from product to product. Thus, waste of the buyer's time and the presenter's time occurs. In addition, the physical presentation process for products is not time-efficient, and any even small presence or use of computer procedures and programs in this area is inefficient or completely lacking.
Recently, a wide range of interactive devices has been developed to provide information to consumers via communications networks. These interactive devices include, for example, computers connected to various computer on-line services, interactive kiosks, interactive television systems and the like. In particular, the popularity of computer on-line services has grown immensely in popularity over the last decade. Computer on-line services are provided by a wide variety of different companies. In general, most computer on-line services are accessed via the Internet. The Internet is a global network of computers. One popular part of the Internet is the World Wide Web, or the “Web.” The World Wide Web contains computers that display graphical and textual information. Computers that provide information on the World Wide Web are typically called “Web sites.” A Web site is defined by an Internet address that has an associated electronic page, often called a “home page.” Generally, a home page is an electronic document that organizes the presentation of text, graphical images, audio and video into a desired display. These Web sites are operated by a wide variety of entities, which are typically called “providers.”
A user may access the Internet via a dedicated high-speed line or by using a personal computer (PC) equipped with a conventional modem. Special interface software, called “browser” software, is installed within the PC. When the user wishes to access the Internet by normal telephone line, an attached modem is automatically instructed to dial the telephone number associated with the local Internet host server. The user can then access information at any address accessible over the Internet. Two well-known web browsers, for example, are the Netscape Navigator browser marketed by Netscape Communications Corporation and the Internet Explorer browser marketed by Microsoft Corporation.
Information exchanged over the Internet is typically encoded in HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) format. The HTML format is a scripting language that is used to generate the home pages for different content providers. In this setting, a content provider is an individual or company that places information (content) on the Internet so that others can access it. As is well known in the art, the HTML format is a set of conventions for marking different portions of a document so that each portion appears in a distinctive format. For example, the HTML format identifies or “tags” portions of a document to identify different categories of text (e.g., the title, header, body text, etc.). When a web browser accesses an HTML document, the web browser reads the embedded tags in the document so it appears formatted in the specified manner.
An HTML document can also include hyperlinks, which allow a user to move from one document to another document on the Internet. A hyperlink is an underlined or otherwise emphasized portion of text that, when selected using an input device such as a mouse, activates a software connection module, which allows the user to jump between documents or pages (i.e., within the same Web site or to other Web sites). Hyperlinks are well known in the art, and have been sometimes referred to as anchors. The act of selecting the hyperlink is often referred to as “clicking on” the hyperlink.